Modern day racism

Has anyone here experienced or seen racism in their life? I have recently, and it was unsettling because it happened at my church and within my family. A black friend of mine was visiting my church, and he went to take one of the bulletins from an elderly deacon. After handing him the Bulletin, the guy looked at him and earnestly asked, "Can you read?" to this 35 YEAR OLD MAN. I just stood there and was like, "WTF?"

another time,my uncle was cutting turkey for a meal and I was snatching pieces of it. He looked at me and said "if you want it so bad, why don't you just pretend you're black- rip a leg off, and go eat it outside."

anybody else had experiences like this? It's making me think that america isn't as integrated as we'd like to assume.

I witness almost the same degree of racism & intolerance now as in the Civil Rights struggles of the sixties. The main difference is that today's racists do not display their bigotry so openly - only because it's considered bad form, very un-PC.

Remember that the Republican politics of fear, division, and greed are built upon a foundation of racism & xenophobia. Proof of its thriving condition is not only bu$hCorp, but the current Republican Senate & House majorities. Raygun's first-term open statement "I will do everything possible to un-do LBJ's Great Society programs" was the rallying cry of racist revival, echoed by Newt Gingich's Contract On America, today's Reich policies of school vouchers & faith-based innitiatives, the Iraq invasion, and the most dangerous thrust of all, "Starve The Beast."

"Twenty years ago, Reagan administration officials developed a strategy some of its officials called "starve the beast." The idea was that if they cut taxes low enough and raised military spending high enough, then little money would be left for social programs for the poor." http://www.progressive.org/pmpca1901.html

The bu$hCorp/PNAC manifest destiny crowd has elevated "Starve The Beast" to an art form, and most Americans - including its victims - are totally unaware. There are 12 links to articles & editorials on this elitist, racist, classist reichwing project in the LINKS section of:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bushbusting_ammo/

I was in my early 20s before I realized how wrongheaded it was. Fifteen years later, I'm still trying to exorcise those demons from my psyche. :(

full of bigots? It's interesting that you would mention this tonight. This weekend my apt. (which is connected to a house)was exterminated (along with the house). My landlord, her roommate, and I have had to stay in other locations for several days. We ended up not getting to come back yesterday at noon as promised and I wasn't able to get back into my apt. until after 10:00 p.m. last night. When I got in, some things were definitely out of place, my landlord has a few things broken, etc. Needless to say, it didn't go well. So today, she says to me (and SHE'S A LESBIAN BUT ONE WHO I BELIEVE IS AN INTERNAL HOMOPHOBE)that it's probably "those stupid Mexicans faults." (she doesn't even know if "Mexicans" were the ones doing the job) -I thought I was gonna blow a gasket!!!! Oh yea, I think she's also a Republican since she's retired from a defense company, she wears these USA boxer shorts all the time and she's got that flag wavin' everywhere. Plus, she was for the war in Iraq. Anyho, I looked her straight in the eyes and said "you know, I know a lot more WHITE people (and I'm a white lesbian female of 46)who've screwed a lot more things up than this! DON'T blame this on Mexican Americans, that's unacceptable." She backed down and apologized - but she's made comments like this before - it makes me sick.

You're right to be offended by it, but you also sound as though you're also surprised that such a level racism still exists in this day and age. I've never been under the illusion that we've eliminated racism in this country, and I'm not sure we'll eradicate it completely in my lifetime.

are tolerated. eom

But I was born in 1940. Unfortunately, I was more concerned about gender inequality more than I was about race or ethnicity.

Under the circumstances, I had to ask because it was important.

It might be a mistake to immediately assume that racism was the basis for the question.

WHITE man if HE could read? And why does the ability to read matter when handing out church bulletins? Some folks bring them home for others to look at, etc. Asking this man (and, I assume, ONLY this man)if he could read is a complete crock of shite.

Either...

a) don't go to Church
b) don't have friends your family will disapprove of
c) beat the crap out of the elderly deacon and dear Uncle


no parasan!

while at a peace rally i told him i was a Latina and then he told me to back to puerto rico (i am a mexican oh well got the brownskin at least)
been told to go back to mexico My friend while countering a pro war rally was beaten w/an american flag and was told to go back to mexico (she is fourth gen texan :eyes: ) I can turn on AM radio and be told that my race "breeds" instead of gives birth and that we come from "turd world countries" (w/nods to savage weiner)

I should be out holding up a convenience store, doing a driveby, I've been called 'boy', was told my kind was not wanted around here and some people even bust the ebonics on me when they introduce themselves to me; I'm not even joking about that. But I'm White like they are, Italian to be exact; apparently that's not White enough for some people down here. I'm mistaken a lot for being light-skinned Puerto Rican; so much so that Latinos have come up and started talking to me in Spanish. I only speak un poco, so I tell them I'm sorry I don't speak much Spanish. As for the people that talk to me in ebonics, I sometimes entertain them and talk back in ebonics, then laugh about it with my friends later. But sometimes I'll mix it up and I'll come back at them with some kind of intellectual-sounding response, which, from the look on their faces, blows their minds and makes them red with embarassment.

not all of us from florida are assholes. Sounds like you deal with them with humour...I can just see the look on those bubba faces!

Is it really that utopian on your planet?

its just that I never paid that much attention to this kind of stuff before, and now that I am, i see a lot more of it.

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I live in a conservative subburb of Atlanta. What bugs the hell out of me are the racist comments said by people as an aside to me, assuming that since I am white I must agree. I always set them quite straight. These same people acts like they aren't racist at all when in the company of African Americans or Mexican Americans, but then say these remarks when just the white folks are around.

What bugs the hell out of me are the racist comments said by people as an aside to me, assuming that since I am white I must agree.

I'm Asian, and I was on a Greyhound bus a few years ago chilling with a bunch of the fellow passengers. When we got off, this one white guy that I'd been socializing with said to me, "You know, I really don't like black people."

Thats the good ole fashion variety.

Racism has never gone away, and there is no "modern day" or "old-fashioned" racism--it just IS. And it exists in every corner of this country, even in the most liberal of places.

Now that you've seen these things happen, you should get in the habit of challenging them openly. That is one of the heardest things for many people to do. When you hear and see things like that, you need to be brave and go up to the person responsible for it and tell them what they've said or done isn't right. Education is the best way to eradicate racism.

It's making me think that america isn't as integrated as we'd like to assume.

I think it's gotten worse under this administration.

I really feel, of late, that everything bad that's out there is the fault of this administration, and sometimes I wonder if I'm not just getting weird. At the same time, when the administration opposes affirmative action as happened in Michigan a while ago...

It seems that while the prejudices were always there, because of social pressures people were reluctant to express them out loud. Now, with the right wingers holding power, people feel freer to say out loud what they were more or less socially ostracized for saying before.

Of course, if we are encouraged to be disrespectful of entire groups of people (i.e. Muslims, Arabs) without consideration of the individuals who are part of that group, then I suppose it's natural that the general climate of disrespect would spread to other non-WASP groups.

Still... I saw the same kind of thing happen when Ronald Reagan was elected. There are people who seem to feel that minority groups are taking away something from them when the minorities achieve equal rights, or when the poor are given a little bit of the sort of welfare that the very wealthiest expect to receive as their entitlement. Extending rights to all people cannot possibly take rights away from anyone, unless they are talking about the alleged "right" to lord it over someone else.

If anything, this administration is leading America up to the point where none of us will ever again be able to feel in any way superior to anyone else. Bush is disgracing the country in the eyes of the entire world. It might happen that when Americans all are viewed as the lowest of the low by the rest of the world, that will be the cure that's needed for those among us who imagine that any of us are any better than any of the rest of us.

I understand that Germany has a law that says that no one can deny the Holocaust. While Americans would see that as some infringement on their freedom of speech, I wonder if there isn't some other way of eliminating racist and prejudiced speech that would work to our benefit in the U.S.

the Mumia/Charles Graner dots? Wonder if good ol' Charlie is a Rush fan.
Germany's laws on "hate speech" are excellent. Folks here GET IT.

In louisiana a good number of right wing republicans did not vote for their candidate in the Governor's race just because he was a brown conservative. They feel it is not just enough to be conservative but you got to be a whitie

and it's pretty extreme, but at least it's out there. It only illustrates the ignorance that perpetuates racism. These people more ignorant than the people they assume to be ignorant..

and I happen to be a woman of color. My first name is German.

A few months ago this woman asked me about my name and I told her it was German, that I was born there, and she replied "well, you don't LOOK German."

Halle Berry doesn't look half-white, either, but surprise, surprise.

Clearly she hasn't been in Germany recently. This isn't the 1940's when you could tell where a person was from based on how they looked. We're in a GLOBAL economy, stupid woman. There are Peruvians of Japanese extraction nowadays.

And besides, don't you think there were more than enough US GIs who intermarried with Germans? Idiot.